I was speaking with someone today, who considers himself as quite a literary critic…we spoke briefly of Homer, I was recalling my fondness for the Odyssey, and he was of the opinion that ther was no such man as Homer. That what we have as Homer today was really a long and drawn out collaboration of many different authors that passed down an oral tradion, until we came to the uniform text that we have today. He equated Homer more or less as an ancient way of saying “anonymous”.
Is he full of it, or is this a theory that has floated around in circles for a while? He spoke briefly of biblical criticism, and I know he’s full of it there, especially concerning the TaNaK, you can’t tell me Job was written by a post-excilic Jew…I just don’t buy it! I was just wondering if he might be just as full of it concerning Homer. I have done no real Homeric Criticism, but I do think that there are different manuscript traditions, I know that most ancient documents, if we are lucky enough to have more than a handful of manuscripts, have different manuscript traditions or families.
Any insight you could share would be greatly appreciated.
You realize this has been a debate topic of white-hot intensity among scholars since the 1700s?
Gregory Nagy is the current exponent of this theory. I incline to the views of M.L. West, which is that the Homeric poems clearly come from within an oral tradition, but that a single person is responsible for form of the poems we have today, possibly one person for the Iliad and another for Odyssey. There were evidently schools of aoidoi (epic poets), so the similarities between the texts don’t have to be the same person, just two people trained similarly.
As for the name “Homer”, do you know of the Homeridae, the “sons of Homer”? This was one of those schools of epic recitation, who did a lot of the work making their name-sake famous. The problem is that their name may be a Semitic language calque.
The Epic poems as we have them came out of Ionia, from the Levant. The Epic poems are full to the brim with themes and even turns of phrase from the Semitic languages, no great surprise since the Ionians were surrounded by older Semitic-speaking civilizations. For example, Agamemnon is called “shepherd of the people” in the Iliad, a turn of phrase which will not reappear in Greek until the coming of Christianity.
In a number of the Semitic languages, professions are indicated by the phrasing, “Sons of X” where X might be “carpenters” or “potters” or whatever. Reciters of poems would be the “sons of reciters.” Guess what the Aramaic for reciter is… 'omer. The Greek for “sons of reciters”, but keeping the profession in Aramaic: Omeridae. (Note that the New Ionic dialect is psilotic - no aspiration - so that Herodotus would have called Homer, “Omer,” too).
So, my suspicion is that the Homeridae came first, then Homer. M.L. West includes this as one possibility for the identity of Homer in his “The East Face of Helicon.”
Perhaps we should move this to the more general “Learning Greek” forum or even to the “Open Board” for more exposure?
In my opinion, these manuscript families sprung up because of slight variations (some unintentional I’m sure) in the retelling of the epics in different geographical areas. Some variations (or “errors” if you want to go that far) were also probably introduced later as folks wrote the epics down and these “errors” were subsequently recopied/perpetuated over time.
Also in my opinion, a physical, “flesh and blood” Homer did exist - no tangible, concrete proof, just “faith” for lack of a better term. Whether or not he was truly named “Homer” we just have to take the ancient Greek’s word now, don’t we? Otherwise, I wasn’t aware of any Shakespearean-like “the dude in the red cap really wrote the Iliad” theories floating out there, but it doesn’t surprise me. Next thing coming down the research-pipe will probably be a “mapping” of correlations/differences between the manuscripts with grammatical analysis of sections taken into account. The cycle will then come full circle with the subsequent christening of the alleged-authors ala the “J”, “E”, “P”, “D”, “Q”, etc. that is prevalent in biblical authorship research.
Before you know it, the authorship of all “ancient” texts will be questioned. Who knows - someday in the future, “researchers” will question Stephen King’s authorship of “Carrie” and the lot. “I didn’t personally see him/her put pen to paper therefore…” – OT: hey this is a perfect tie-in to the “absolute certainty” philosophical debate in “The Academy”.
“Did the feudal lords really draft the Magna Carta?”
“Did Martin Luther really compose his 95 theses?”
“Did Jefferson really draft the ‘Declaration of Independence’?”
“Did Lincoln really compose the ‘Gettysburg Address’?”
“Did Jeff really create a website called ‘Textkit’?”
Also in my opinion, a physical, “flesh and blood” Homer did exist - no tangible, concrete proof, just “faith” for lack of a better term. Whether or not he was truly named “Homer” we just have to take the ancient Greek’s word now, don’t we?
Do we really? Why? You’re also making the assumption that the ancient Greeks were in agreement on this question. They were not. Well, in the earliest evidence they were not; over time the matter settled into “Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey” we know today. (The Homeridae were a good PR firm… even Socrates listed Hesiod before Homer in terms of who came first by time; by the Hellenistic period Homer had moved to the head of the line.)
The cycle will then come full circle with the subsequent christening of the alleged-authors ala the “J”, “E”, “P”, “D”, “Q”, etc. that is prevalent in biblical authorship research.
Too late. This has all already been done. One scholar (August Fick, if I recall correctly) ripped out everything he thought was “late” and restored the text to Aeolic purity. Needless to say, no one does this much any more, though I have an old school edition of Selections from 1907 that bristles with restored digammas everywhere, some quite surprising:
ἀλλὰ κακῶς V’ ἀφίει > A.25
Here the digamma is for an elided enclitic ἑ, “him/her/it” acc.sing. There is not one drop of textual evidence for this, nor does the meter hint at it.
“Did the feudal lords really draft the Magna Carta?”
“Did Martin Luther really compose his 95 theses?”
“Did Jefferson really draft the ‘Declaration of Independence’?”
You are familiar with the phrase “slipery slope argument?”
It’s hard for me to get too agitated about the Homeric Problem. It’s not the business of scholars to say, “all that we think we know is so.” Their ideas will flourish or wither in time, usually as appropriate (as in the case of Fick’s strange restoration). There is also the indisputable reality of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I’m much more interested in the text than the author.
Suppose it was Wibur? Or Edith? Would we have, could we have overlooked it? Maybe more to the point, if it were the product of Athenean Idol, would it lose its luster?
I think I agree with annis. Once the provinance is lost I think the question becomes moot or simply devolves into speculation. What becomes important is why people value the content. We don’t fear whether Stephen King will surpass Shakespeare in future or even care if the people confuse the two. But to lose the plays! And I’m confident that should “Carrie” survive 500 years it will have all the honors due it. All honor is fleeting.
Yes…except how does this apply to individual/isolated “points to ponder” (albeit they are unintentionally in listed chronological order)? This isn’t a sequence of “if X then Y” statements leading up to a final conclusion - perhaps I should have prefaced/ended these with a “start/end of sarcasm” disclaimer, although I didn’t see the need since this was immediately preceeded by the Stephen King/Carrie remark (not to mention the Jeff/Textkit remark and the seemingly never-ending “absolute certainty” philosophical debate). Was I really implying that authorship of the Magna Carta affected the eventual creation of Textkit?
The point intended by these individually rhetorical questions is to illustrate the absurdity/pointlessness of some of the things that have, over time, come into question. Timothy mentions that “once provenance is lost” – maybe that is a root of the problem, as a society we have “allowed” provenance to be lost too often. The Muslims use something in a similar vein as a key criticism of Christianity (in particular the “responsibility” of Christians): that Christians did not make the effort to write down Christ’s words as they were spoken so that all that is left are second/third-hand accounts that agree in some points and differ in others. (This argument of course is based on the claim that the Qu’ran was completed/written while Mohammed was living and has maintained absolute integrity ever since).
Heck, the way this discussion has potential to turn into a much deeper subject, maybe this should be moved to the “Academy” instead?!
(Note to Stephen King fans: no disrespect implied/intended – I just wanted to use an example of a contemporary author/work for the purpose of illustration. Besides, the “Dark Tower” series really takes the cake!)
Hmm. That’s true. In my brain any escalating sequence of absurdities is a “slipery slope” but that’s not quite right. I’m sure a Scholiast somewhere has a special name for what you did.
Hey annis, trust me, no offense taken! I saw this as a scholarly, impersonal discussion. I tried to look up if there was a literary term for what I had done perhaps an “anaphoric stream of consciousness” (if such a term is a valid beast)? Some literary term definitions can be found here.
I just scratched my head when I read “slippery slope” and had to review to make sure I hadn’t done such a thing, since I did originally write this post much earlier in the morning, then subsequently got distracted for a few hours only to return and hit “submit”. So I did the short circuit “Magna Carta => Textkit” and went "Huh?! "
i don’t know if this is on-topic, but one reason why people ask “was there 1 homer?” much more than other authors has to do with the use of formulas in homer. milman parry basically concludes in his famous studies that the system of formulas used throughout homer is so sophisticated, wide-ranging and “finished” that no 1 person could have done this in a lifetime. the problem isn’t just that there isn’t any real evidence about homer’s life: that’s not what fires the homeric question. so it’s not the same problem as with people like shakespeare and others.
I saw this as a scholarly, impersonal discussion. I tried to look up if there was a literary term for what I had done perhaps an “anaphoric stream of consciousness” (if such a term is a valid beast)? Some literary term definitions can be found 
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